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Why I Like Obsidian

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Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#301

Post by npunt »

rchaud wrote: post #262
theshrike79 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obsidian has the sama problem as Bullet Journaling does. It's really simple and not complicated unless you want it to be, but then you watch a video about one Mega User who is really into the System and get demoralised by the amount of crap and whizbangs you see.

Why would anybody get demoralized? Does the tool get the job done or not? Your goals are not the same as the person making a Youtube video. Nobody's going to put down "Highly Proficient with Obsidian" on their resume in hopes of it giving them an edge in the job search.

The problem is that in niche tools / gear / whatever, the message 'you must do it this way' plays to the curiosity and concerns of new users looking to get into something.

A cottage industry of people have thus sprung up around providing this content, and recommendation algorithms and search results wind up being dominated by this content.

For a new user who's just heard about something, the path is often straight to this content, which then leads some to bouncing off of it because it seems too daunting.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#302

Post by eternityforest »

ezst wrote: post #299

Unpopular opinion: I dislike obsidian. I came to the realization that any reasonably large collection of notes requires structure, which goes by the definition of types (for people, places, organizations, ...). Obsidian is very rudimentary in this regard: it offers properties, folders and templates. Those are workable at first but fall apart soon enough: you can derive many instances of a type from a certain template…

Looks really cool, aside from the lack of Android support or a managed cloud option.

My big issue with Obsidian is just performance. Android likes to kill the background process and you're waiting 10 seconds or more just to be able to write a 5 word shopping list entry.

I eventually switched to Google Keep, with always listening assistant turned on.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#303

Post by eternityforest »

theshrike79 wrote: post #248
benhurmarcel wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s pretty likely that a lot of Obsidian users use it for their professional activity without paying. Personally I haven’t considered it because of that. I have no use for a complex notes app in my private life, and there’s no way my employer would pay for the subscription.

> I have no use for a complex notes app in my private life I thought so too, but then I noticed I was searching the internet for the same things over and over again. (Or asking it from GPT). Then I started writing stuff down as I searched it, with a sentence or two of my own text + a few tags. Now I can find stuff directly from Obsidian (or more like from the set of markdown files on my drive) instead of having to sw…

That really belongs in the browser I think. Ideally we could just highlight the info we want to save, type a note, and the whole page gets saved offline as plain HTML, along with a markdown file that points to it.

Pocket is about as close as it gets it seems...

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#304

Post by [deleted] »

Tomte wrote: post #155
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's what caused me to pick it. Selling usage for commercial use is a smart move, and I want to ensure the original developers are incentivized to keep working on the product.

That didn‘t work so much for Dynalist.

[deleted]

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#305

Post by barbazoo »

rchaud wrote: post #266
barbazoo wrote: post #259

Anyone know of an alternative that stores data locally and looks and feels a bit more like Notion? The plain list like note view is just so ugly and when I create a new note I'd want it to be in the context of whatever I'm currently looking at, not at the root. I know about tags and the graph view but it's just not what I need. There was a comment to a Notion related submission the other day that talked about somethi…

Was it anytype.io?

It wasn't but it looks great!

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#306

Post by jdksmdbtbdnmsm »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #238
jdksmdbtbdnmsm wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All Obsidian plugins are just cloned github repos

Really? Shit that’s terrible. I need to review what plugins I’m using.

Yeah it's really sad. I just wish I could pin each plugin to a commit hash. It would be incredible and so easy to do.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#308

Post by packetlost »

JoeJonathan wrote: post #228
packetlost wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You definitely can't just jump into zettelkasten, but it is actually used in various modified forms. I've been doing so for years and know of a number of others that do as well.

On the other hand, I'm a professional academic, and I haven't ever met a highly productive scholar who uses ZK.

Yeah, most of the academics I know have a pile in OneNote or mountains of paper notebooks. I don't know if zk is good for research tbh, but I do think you can take some ideas from it. I personally use "bullet journaling" + a modified zk method.

I'd be curious to hear what the "highly productive" academics you know use.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#309

Post by kstrauser »

sgt wrote: post #289
kstrauser wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I’ve considered trying to use Keyboard Maestro to implement an ersatz Markdown mode, like “replace '## ' with ‘trigger the Set Heading Format menu’” or “replace ``` with ‘trigger the Monostyled format menu’”. Huh. Having actually written that out, that should be easy. I know what I’m doing this morning.

Please do share the outcome. I believe there is interest in this. Apple Notes is always there and convenient, which pulls me back.

I've published them at https://dev.honeypot.net/kirk/keyboard-maestro if you're interested.

Edit: That also turned into a new blog post at https://honeypot.net/post/making-notes-looks-like-markdown-e... . Thanks for the nudge! I've been trying to get into a cadence, but hadn't had anything to talk about recently.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#310

Post by viraptor »

ssgodderidge wrote: post #254
theshrike79 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obsidian has the sama problem as Bullet Journaling does. It's really simple and not complicated unless you want it to be, but then you watch a video about one Mega User who is really into the System and get demoralised by the amount of crap and whizbangs you see.

yeah exactly. The problem is that the Mega Users are the ones who are most likely to share their system. People who say "I just use X as a notepad" aren't as likely to share.

In case it helps anyone: I use Obsidian as a notepad. I put in text in notes and sometimes put those notes in some folder if it seems to make sense. It works great and the only plugin I added for editing is a latex helper. You don't need a system or many modifications to be a happy Obsidian user.
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